


A Thousand Diamonds

by malikyiaue



Series: I Fought the Law and the Law Won [2]
Category: Spartacus Series (TV)
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-06-01
Updated: 2013-05-31
Packaged: 2017-12-13 14:40:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,467
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/825457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/malikyiaue/pseuds/malikyiaue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What does it really mean to fall in love?  Is it the way someone smiles? Is it the way your lives become one? Is it all the little things all rolled up together? </p>
<p>Agron and Nasir explore this, in the sequel to "I Fought The Law."</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Thousand Diamonds

**Author's Note:**

> Alright! Here we go! Part two of this series. I hope you guys are buckled in, because it looks like this is going to be a long ride.

Since their conversation two weeks ago – the night Duro came home – they'd seen each other almost every single day. Mostly, that involved things like Agron stopping by Nasir's campus on the way to work (even if it wasn't at all on the way to work), and lazy afternoons after Nasir's classes and before Agron had to go to work, where Nasir'd come over and they'd sit in the living room or at the bar-top and discuss anything and everything, and pick on Duro, who inevitably bore a million complaints. They hadn't really been on any _dates_ , at least not in a formal sense. They'd just been hanging out, with an occasional side-helping of making out. And while neither one of them was complaining about that – Agron always felt excitement pooling in his stomach when Nasir got out of class and he waited for the call that said he was coming over, and Nasir found himself thinking about spending time in the little two bedroom apartment whenever he wasn't there – it didn't exactly count as really dating. 

It was something that hadn't really even bothered Agron, until he was sitting in Duro's room one day, and helping him twist together bread ties for some project or another, because Duro couldn't stand sitting still. 

“So, when are you going to start dating Nasir? And you're fucking that up, by the way.” 

Agron looked up from the mess in his hands and over at Duro, raising an eyebrow. “What do you mean, when am I going to start dating Nasir? We've been dating.” 

“Really? Coulda fooled me. When was your first date?” He reached over and took the bread ties from Agron. 

“Well, we never really had a first date but -” 

“Exactly. So how can you be _dating_ if you never had a first date?” 

Duro was just fucking with him, but he'd done it with a straight face and dry humor, and a half an hour later, Agron was on the phone with Nasir, asking him to go on an actual date on Wednesday. 

“Hey.” 

“Hey? What's up? Is everything okay?” 

Agron ran a hand through his hair – and Duro could just barely see him through the doorway. 

“Yeah. Yeah. I just – I thought we should go out sometime. You know, on a real date.” 

Nasir had to fight back the urge to laugh. “Yeah, sure. Of course.” 

Duro smirked in his bed, and pretended to be asleep when Agron came in to tell him about it, because he was absolutely certain he couldn't get through a conversation about it without laughing at Agron. 

 

 

“T-shirt or button down?” 

Nasir looked over his shoulder at the blonde girl who was sitting on the edge of his bed, her legs crossed until her feet were under her picking at the skin around her nails gently. If there was anyone who was a master at making a good impression, it was Chadara. She was outstandingly beautiful, something Nasir sometimes commented on when he got too drunk around her, but that wasnt't it. He wasn't actually sure exactly what 'it' was, but Chadara had it; she was the only girl he knew who'd gone into prostitution voluntarily – and the only one he knew who was able to charge five hundred dollars an hour. She was also his best friend. And who else did you turn to when getting ready for a first date? 

She looked up at him with an almost bored sort of expression, her lids drooping just slightly, and looking like he had far better things to do, but Nasir knew better. The instant her eyes fell onto the two shirts he was holding up, her expression changed entirely, and her eyes went wide and her mouth hung open, obviously aghast. “Oh my god. Nasir, No.” 

She unfurled her long legs from the bed, and walked over him to take the shits out of his hand, giving them a look as if they might actually be poison before tossing them on the bed. “Are you kidding me? You have got to be the only gay guy in the world with this awful of a fashion sense. How on earth did I get straddled with you?” 

Even as she began to go through his clothes though, pushing them aside with a ferocity normally reserved for things like killing spiders and button mashing video games, he knew she did it with love in her heart. “Next thing I know, you'll be asking me if you should kiss him hello.” She murmured, only halfway to herself before pulling out a shirt Nasir thought he'd thrown out years ago from the back of his closet. It was a v-necked tshirt with some very slight ribbing to it that was soft as anything, and had cost more money than he liked to think about now: a remnant of his old life. 

“What? Do you mean I shouldn't kiss him hello?” He asked, making a face at the shirt and taking up the spot she'd just occupied on the bed. 

“Of course not.” Happy with her selection in tops, she moved on to his pants – looking for that one pair of jeans that Nasir liked to think were a size too small, but really fit him quite well - “It's a first date. You have to build up some of the tension at first. A long hug, perhaps, and then pull back just enough to look up in his eyes. Let him know that you want him, but hold out. It'll drive him absolutely crazy.” There they were. She gave a smile, and Nasir was a little bit jealous. She was beautiful, and had men paying hundreds of dollars just to spend time with her; who wouldn't be just a little bit jealous? Who didn't, even just a little bit, want that sort of lifestyle? 

She grabbed a scarf in a combination of red and yellow that he thought was maybe a little big gaudy, but that she'd gotten him for Christmas year before last after a discussion about Harry Potter houses, and deciding that he'd be in Gryffindor. He didn't agree with her assessment. Really, she'd just gotten it because the colors popped against his skin, bringing out the rich undertones and making him look like he was positively glowing. 

With a smile, proud of her handiwork, she pushed the clothes at him, and then took up the spot they'd been sharing once again when he stood up to pull them on. 

“And don't forget to lean forward when you're talking. Not too much; I mean, you're not a girl, it's not like you're trying to draw his attention to your chest, and even if you were you'd want it to be subtle. But lean forward. It makes you look more dynamic and interesting. It'll catch his attention.”

“Chadara?” Nasir sounded gentle and innocent as he tied the scarf around his neck, and felt absolutely silly even if he looked stylish. 

“Hmm?” 

“I've been dating Agron for a month now. I don't need your advice on how to catch his attention.” 

At the irritated look on his face, she couldn't help but let out a raccuous laugh, tossing her head back, her face pointing up at the ceiling and her blonde hair dancing with the movement of her body. 

It only irritated him further. 

“Whatever you say, baby-doll.” 

 

Agron was standing in front of the floor length mirror against the wall of Duro's room and fiddling with the cuff on his chambray shirt, trying to get it to lay flat without having to dig out the iron. It was kind of a ridiculous principle, considering he'd decided to leave the first three buttons undone, revealing a bit of his collar bone and the dip between the muscles on his chest. His nerves were getting to him, which explained why he was in Duro's room as opposed to his own, and why he'd folded and unfolded that cuff four times so far, and was busy frowning at it as he turned his arm around and around, watching it in the mirror to make sure it was laying flat at all angles. 

“Just don't propose, okay?” 

Agron looked up from his sleeve, and over at Duro, with one eyebrow raised so highly, it might've been trying to escape his face. “Shut up. I'm not that stupid, idiot.” 

Duro had been holding an Avengers comic book up in front of his face, his head propped up on every single pillow in the house so that he could sit up straight, but he put it down when Agron said that, a bit more curtly than he meant to. He knew it wasn't anything personal, and he couldn't help but smile at his big brother. 

“I never said you were stupid.” 

“I'm pretty sure you say I'm stupid at least three times a day.” 

“Okay, well, yeah. I do. But I'm not saying you're stupid this time. I'm saying you're … passionate.” It'd taken Duro a few moments to search for the right word. It was hardly a trait that belonged to Agron alone; it ran in their family, and Duro tended to be much the same way. They did everything wholeheartedly.

“Is that a bad thing?” 

“I'm just saying...” Sometimes, Duro took shit for his own impulsiveness. He took shit because he didn't watch his mouth like he should, and things slipped out when he didn't mean for them to; he was kind of a blabber mouth, and didn't tend to have much filter between his brain and what came out of him. But right now, he was trying really, really fucking hard to think of the right words to use with Agron – something that wouldn't offend him. “Be careful. Watch yourself. Don't jump into this so quickly that you get your heart broken.” 

Agron was a grown man. He was the sort of man that most people were afraid of, when all they saw was a giant wall of muscle, but Duro knew better. Duro knew his brother. He knew that under all of that was a man who's heart was probably bigger than the rest of him all put together, and that if something happened, he was going to be absolutely devastated. And while he might be the annoying younger sibling, who made it a goal in life to irritate Agron in as many ways as possible, he did it because he loved him. And Agron didn't have a monopoly, in the Schafer house, on being protective of his siblings. Duro didn't want to see his big brother get hurt. 

The shoulders of Agron's shirt were crooked just slightly. Off by maybe a couple of centimeters, but he knew that it'd be enough to irritate Agron if he actually knew. Duro longed to get out of bed and go fix it for him, and then smack him on the ass and make some sort of lewd joke, but there was only so much he could do in his current situation. His neck was still broken – still kept in a Halo Brace to keep his head still for at least two more weeks – and while he could feel his legs, he couldn't quite move them. Any getting out of the bed, even for this, was impossible. His fingers twitched on the bed beside him, and every muscle in him ached with a sadness for what he couldn't do for Agron. 

Agron opened his mouth to answer, but a knock on the door stopped him. 

Nasir'd refused Agron's offer to pick him up. It wasn't that he was particularly ashamed of where he lived; they'd discussed his living arrangements before, and how he rented a twin bed in a room with revolving roommates who never seemed to last long, but he still didn't want Agron seeing it. Hearing about it left it as an abstract concept. If Agron actually saw it – Nasir wasn't sure what would happen, but he really didn't want Agron to look at him with pity. 

There were a lot of things he could take. Pity was not one of them. His pride, or whatever he had left of it, just wouldn't allow for that. 

“Dude. You're not even going to pick him up?” Duro could be heard stage-whispering from the bedroom, even as Agron walked out into the living room and let Nasir in. “Way to bomb first-date 101. Shit... You're lucky he even gives you a second look.” 

“Who says I should be the one to pick him up? Why can't he be the one to pick me up?”

Duro didn't really have a good answer for that one. “Because that's what the etiquette books say, God, what are you a godless, manner-less heathen, ” didn't really work when they were both men. 

Agron opened the door, and smiled down at Nasir with this brilliant, bubbly smile that seemed to radiate from the very core of his being, and leaned down to press a kiss to his cheek as he let him in. It made Nasir's knees weak in a terribly cliché sort of way, and his stomach jump with butterflies and nerves. And when Nasir smiled back at him, Agron couldn't have cared if the rest of the world thought they were going about this in all the wrong ways. 

“You ready to go?” 

“Almost.” 

Agron held up one finger to Nasir, who had to resist the urge to reach out and grab his hand and pull him out of the door right now, because he wanted nothing more than to get this all started. But instead he stood still, and looked up at Agron with one brow just slightly raised. There was a momentary pause, where Agron looked down at him, before he spun around and grabbed something off the counter, tossing it to Nasir, who caught it with far more grace than he even realized he had. 

“What's -” He looked down at the package in his hand, and then smiled. That was no longer his stomach fluttering: that was his heart. “Skittles?” 

Agron just shrugged, and grabbed his coat, slipping it on effortlessly and looking at Nasir as if this was no big thing at all. It really wasn't; it was just a pack of skittles. But the way Nasir was smiling, he might as well have just handed him the sun itself, all tied up with a pretty little – no. Maybe not the sun. The sun tended to burn people. “Yeah, well. I ate half of yours in the hospital.” He slipped an arm around Nasir's shoulders, then, and began to guide him out the door. “I thought about getting you flowers, but I thought that might not quite work out well, since you're not a girl.” 

Which was, to Agron's reasoning, a very, very good thing. 

Nasir laughed. It was barely more than a chuckle, but it shook his whole chest and made his eyes dance, and Agron was absolutely certain he'd never seen anything so beautiful in his life. 

“Agron, if you ever get me flowers, I will turn _you_ into a girl.” 

Agron couldn't help but laugh as well, and Nasir felt pride bubbling in his veins at making Agron laugh, because it was the most adorable thing in the world – the way his cheeks dimpled, and his whole body got into it. “I'm completely serious. Flowers are the biggest cop-out of a romantic gift, and I mean, really? Who sits there and thinks, 'you know what I'll do? I'll cut this living thing to pieces and give the pieces to my lover to show them how much I care?'” 

“Well, yeah -” They had to seperate to go down the stairs; the hallway was too narrow for the two of them to walk down side-by-side, so instead Agron just grabbed Nasir's hand, and followed him back down the stairs. “But isn't that kind of how it's always been done? Knights bringing the ladies fair the heads of Dragons, and the like?” 

“Do I _look_ like I'm a lady fair?” 

“You look amazing.” 

Nasir could feel the blush rising up the back of his neck at the compliment. It wasn't like he wasn't used to hearing those sorts of things, though, so he carried on as if it didn't effect him at all, even if he kind of wanted to hear Agron say that over and over again. “Thanks. But do I look like a lady fair?” 

“No.” 

“Okay, then. And besides. Killing a dragon involves bravery and danger. It's the risk that makes it romantic. I'm pretty sure no one ever died fighting a killer bit of shrubbery.” 

He had a point. Killer plants were a sort of sci-fi thing, and not exactly the sort of thing one dealt with in real life. “Well. I'd be happy with flowers. Or any sort of anything, really; it'd show that you thought of me.” 

The walk to the car had been easy. They'd just been Agron and Nasir on the walk to the car – enjoying each other's company and talking about stupid things that had no real bearing on anything at all but were a vital part of the getting to know you process. Somehow, though, the instant they climbed into the car, all of that stopped. Nasir got behind the wheel because it was his car, and Agron took up residence in the passenger seat, and then neither of them seemed to know what to say. The silence hung between them for too long to be a comfortable silence, and became palpable and real. Nasir drummed his fingers on the steering wheel as they rode along, and Agron tried to make himself take up as little amount of space in the passenger seat as was absolutely possible, as if he could maybe curl up into himself. And then he started playing with the window. Pressing the button to make it go up, and then down again, as if it would somehow let some of the tension that was filling the car out. 

It didn't. 

It only made it worse. 

They rode like that for about five minutes, before Agron finally broke the silence. “Shit. I don't even know what to say. It's not like we can talk about the typical first date stuff.” 

Nasir raised an eyebrow in confusion, and stole a momentary glance over at him. “What do you mean?” 

“We're past that point, aren't we? I mean, I know what type of toothpaste you prefer and that you like to sleep in your underwear and socks, but that you always kick off one sock in the middle of the night because you get too hot. It'd feel a little bit weird going to things like: 'So, what do you do?'” 

“Do you have any siblings.” 

“What are your hobbies.” 

“How do you feel about Kansas.” 

“Exactly. It's not like we can just go around asking those questions. We already know the answers.” Agron let out a heavy sigh, because it felt like to some extent, he was messing all of this up already, and they were less than ten minutes into the date. 

But he had a point, and Nasir thought about it for a few long seconds as he tried to work out what it was they could actually do. Agron was right. It'd feel odd playing that standard get to know you sort of date. So instead, after a moment of thinking and with a small smile, he shrugged. “Why don't we forget the rules then, and just do what we want to do?” 

Agron couldn't help but smile. That sounded absolutely perfect. “You'll have to show me how to do that. Breaking the rules is your specialty.” 

“Fuck you.” 

But Nasir was smiling, because he loved the idea of breaking the rules with Agron – and not just for the heady feeling of knowing he was corrupting a cop, either. It made him feel like an accomplice: a partner. And Nasir already knew that he wanted Agron to be his partner in so many different things it was almost scary. 

 

 

The restaurant they went to, La Seine, was the sort of pretentious French restaurant that offered a prix fixe menu or items ala carte but without real meals, and had them seated by a maitre d' who was dressed up far more nicely than either of them. The waiters – and Agron didn't see a single woman among them – wore all black, with bistro aprons that reached the floor, and the table cloths were a starkly bleached white that would make it painfully obvious when he spilled something. When, not if, because in a situation like this, it was pretty much a law that he would spill something, even if he managed to eat like a fully functioning human being the rest of the time.

It was absolutely terrifying. 

Agron could manage a good many things without getting frightened, but he could not even begin to manage looking down at this menu and working out what it was he would be ordering based on the names, nor could he figure out how to pronounce them. He was totally and completely out of his element. He could only imagine how Nasir felt, and he suddenly felt very, very guilty about bringing him here. This had been a bad choice. A very bad choice indeed. He'd heard the chief of police talking about bringing his wife here, and how much she loved it, and he thought he'd give it a shot, but now he was regretting that. 

“I'm sorry -” He started to apologize, as he looked over at Nasir, with his eyes wide. But Nasir was already neck-deep in the menu, and looked over at him with a smile. 

“Why don't we do the prix fixe? We can each order one set of the items, and we can share them, so we can try everything?” 

For a moment, Agron just stopped and stared. His jaw was hanging open just slightly, and he was looking at Nasir as if he'd just sprouted a second head, because this was the last thing he was expecting. Agron had a steady job and a steady paycheck, and he didn't know how to handle all this. “How - ?” He asked, raising an eyebrow. 

Nasir just rolled his eyes at him, in the fondest way possible to roll your eyes. “Oh, shut your jaw.” He instructed first off, smiling when the waiter came up. 

“Yes, we'll both be having the prix fixe. I'll be starting with the millas, and he'll have the coquilles Saint-Jacque. We'll both be starting with the Cabernet, please.” He said with a nod of his head in the waiter's direction, as the man took their order, and then bustled himself off with the reserved demeanor that seemed to only belong to professional waiters. 

Once he was gone, Nasir turned back to Agron. “I wasn't always a troublesome little street-rat, you know.” 

“Okay, Aladdin.”

There was a beat of silence, because Agron realized as soon as he'd said it that making a joke about Nasir being the only middle-eastern Disney prince might've been a little bit racist, and Nasir was trying to figure out if he should be offended by it or not, but after that moment, they both burst into laughter. 

“I'm sorry,” Agron said, through his laughter, trying to get himself back in check. “I didn't mean – I just meant -” 

“I called myself a street-rat. I was pretty much asking for it.” Already, in the back of his head, Nasir could hear the song going, and he was pretty sure that Agron could too. Which made it terribly hard to be offended, because he knew exactly why Agron'd called him Aladdin. He managed to get his laughter in check before Agron did, because all of his emotions seemed to be more in check than Agron's, but that didn't mean he didn't find it funny. 

“But it's true. I mean, what do you think? That I grew up living this way?” 

And Agron couldn't help but shrug, and look around him to see if anyone else might've been offended by their behavior, before returning his eyes to Nasir. “I don't know. I don't think I really thought about it too much.”

That, too, might've been offensive, except that Nasir realized he hadn't spent a whole lot of time thinking about how Agron grew up either. They were both too busy getting to know each other in the here and now to have worried about the past. Maybe going out on a real date was a good thing. 

By the time their appetizers arrived, Nasir'd gone through and placed their whole order. “You have to do these things in a specific order. At places like this, they pride themselves on timing everything down to a tee, so that they're pulling the appetizer plates off your table right as your meal is arriving.” He instructed Agron, quietly, while they waited for their food, swirling the wine in his glass, and looking for all the world like he might've been some sort of exquisite, otherworldly being. 

The plates were tiny. And not just compared to Agron, where everything was tiny, but he was pretty sure there were only three or four bites of food on his plate. He looked down at it in awe for a few short moments, practically hearing himself blink. For a moment, he thought about complaining, but this restaurant had been his choice, and he was here to make sure that Nasir had a good time. He would man up, and deal with the hunger, and just go get a burger after he got home, he told himself. 

“So. Tell me about how you grew up then? Because seriously - I mean, no offense, but I'm the one with the better job. I should be more comfortable with places like this than you are.” 

“Okay, asshole.” 

But Nasir wasn't offended then either. He was honestly sort of amused at how much his past life seemed to be blowing Agron's mind, and he couldn't help but smile as he explained it all. How he'd grown up on the north side of town – the side of town with houses that were big enough to get lost in, and where people tended to have money to burn, and crimes like the ones he committed were practically unheard of. He told him about how his mother practiced jazzercise and his father played golf at the local country club, and they owned a yacht for when they wanted to take trips up to the lake house.

“My father's a doctor.” He explained, as they worked their way through the still-ludicrously small first courses, “A plastic surgeon, actually. I had braces when I was about fourteen, not because there was anything really wrong with my teeth, and the dentist kind of warned against it, but my parents didn't want me to have crooked teeth, so …” 

He shrugged, and then told Agron about the house he'd grown up in – a sprawling, ranch-like thing that would have been better suited on an estate than in a more suburban setting. There as a pool in the backyard: “My brother and I used to spend all day playing in the pool, and by the time we came in, our skin'd be almost as dark as our hair. Oh, it'd make Mother so angry.” He said with a bit of forced laughter, because he kind of hated it. What did it matter if he stayed out in the sun too long? 

“But they kicked me out when I came out. And since then, I've been having to make my own way. Which is why I live the way I do.” He said, finally wrapping up the story. There were many more things he could tell about his childhood, of course. Many more stories to tell, but he felt like he'd been talking for hours now, and he wanted to hear more from Agron. 

Agron had been wrapped up in the story. His mind had easily filled with images of Nasir's parents – his father with that same solid jawline and perhaps some salt and pepper to his hair, which would of course be cut more conservatively, and his mother with those big, brown eyes and a smaller stature that allowed her to be dwarfed by almost everyone. He'd imagined him lounging around in a living room that was bigger than his whole apartment, flipping aimlessly through a million channels of tv. He imagined him splashing around in the pool with his brother, who was an older, maybe more serious version of Nasir himself. Everything about it fascinated him.

He wanted to know everything about what made up this man of his. Every single fucking thing. And he'd nearly missed when Nasir stopped talking, he was so busy listening. 

“So. What about you? Was it always just you and Duro, or?” 

But the curiosity went both ways. As much as Agron wanted to know about Nasir, Nasir wanted to know equally about Agron, and he didn't even have to think about Chadara's advice as he leaned in and smiled at Agron across the table, inviting him to spill the beans and share his life's story. 

“No.” Agron felt himself leaning forward as well. “It's still not just me and Duro, actually. There are four of us.” And he told Nasir about his siblings. About Adelais, who was the smartest of them all and only a year younger than him. They looked the most alike, with light hair and green eyes, but she had a similar bone structure to Duro, and was in New York, working as a model and trying to wrangle her way into the world of being a fashion editor. He told him about Gisila, who was the baby of the family, and ten years younger than him. She was going to an International School in the city on a scholarship. 

“We actually grew up kind of poor. My dad died right after Gisila was born, and Mom – Well, Mom runs her own cleaning business, and she busts her ass all the time, but there wasn't ever really a whole lot of money to go around. Still, whenever we had friends come over, she'd always welcome everyone with open arms, and try to feed the whole neighborhood.” There was a fondness in his voice as he talked about his mother – a slightly overweight German woman with a booming voice. She was where they'd all gotten their openness from, and she'd never turned a single person away; she loved everyone. 

Agron, it turned out, had taken odd jobs his entire way through high school to help her earn extra cash, to buy new school clothes for his siblings and the like. One of them had involved dancing around on the street corner in a chicken suit. But his grades had suffered as a result, and he'd graduated high school as a solid C student, which pretty much ruled out going to college. There was no way he could get a scholarship or a grant with those sorts of grades. 

“But I knew I wanted to help people. So I did what I could: I joined the police.” 

Nasir smiled at many of the stories, and he couldn't help but feel like he might love Agron's family as much as he liked the man himself. There was a warmth that spread through his chest just thinking about them – thinking about the sort of people they must be. “Your family sounds absolutely wonderful.” He mused, but it was kind of a corny line, and he regretted it immediately. 

Fortunately, in some things, Agron was nicer than he was, and he didn't make fun of him. 

Once they'd finished their desert and paid for their food though, Nasir found his eyes drifting out of the window, looking across the parking lot almost longingly. He hadn't even bothered reaching for the check; they both knew his financial situation, and neither of them thought he was paying. So instead it was just a waiting game, while the waiter processed Agron's card, and then Agron filled in the tip and signed his autograph (in his head, he always called it an autograph, even if it was just a signature). 

That done, Nasir looked at the little black book, then at Agron, and then back down at the table for a moment. And then he looked up at Agron through his eyelashes, and gave him his most charming smile. 

“So. I'm still hungry. Burgers?” 

“Fuck yes.” 

Agron had to remind himself that Duro was right: He shouldn't just propose to this man on the spot; that they didn't know each other well enough for that. 

But it was proving to be a challenge.


End file.
